Challenges
by the shampain sleeper
Summary: My challenges for forums and such.
1. You'll Regret This

**This is a challenge for NerdClan. Not including this note, it is 2,368 words long. I guess I went a little overboard. Enjoy! **

Dyingflame padded through the undergrowth, eyes narrowed to keep the rain from clouding her vision. Today was the day, she could feel it. Today she would make them feel everything they had ever done to her for her entire existence.

Of course, she could never make them feel the true pain she had felt. That would be impossible. But she could come close.

It had started at her birth. Though Dyingflame herself had never been able to remember that day, she had heard snatches of the whispered conversations her clanmates had whenever she was around.

_Firepetal yowled in pain. Who knew that kitting could be this horrible? Why did she even bother to have kits in the first place? _

_As if that wasn't bad enough, her pathetic mate had recently been taken away by twolegs. Stormfang wasn't much, but he could have at least helped to make the kits less of a burden. _

_Firepetal had gone out hunting earlier, and now she was kitting earlier than expected. Pinewillow was still undecided over whether the extraneous physical activity was to blame._

_Finally, all at once, it was over. _

"_Two kits, both she-kits. Born dead." Pinewillow's mew was hollow._

_Firepetal snorted and rolled her eyes. "All that work for nothing? Good riddance." _

_Pinewillow was about to leave when he heard a small squeak. One of the kits was breathing, albeit in a labored fashion. _Better late than never, _the tom thought to himself as he started to clear the kit's airways. _

_His motions woke Firepetal, who had managed to fall asleep. "What's with all the noise?" she grumbled. _

"_One of the kits is alive."_

_Firepetal looked the kit over. What a miserable scrap it was. She had ginger fur, with darker markings mixed in. It was smaller than usual, most likely due to being born early. Firepetal was doubtful that the kit would survive the next five minutes. _

"_Her name will be Dyingkit."_

"_Dyingkit?" Pinewillow meowed. _

"_Did you not hear me? Look at it. It's barely breathing. How in the name of StarClan could it survive long enough for a proper name?"_

_Pinewillow said nothing more. Firepetal was not a cat whose bad side he wanted to be on._

Dyingflame paused at an overhanging tree to catch her breath. That was another thing. Her "issue". Perhaps it was a result of being born early, or having her airways blocked for so long, but Dyingflame was cursed with breathing difficulties.

_Dyingpaw purred excitedly. Her first outing as an apprentice! Now, for one afternoon, she could forget it all. The stares. The whispers. The false pity. All could be forgotten._

_No matter how long it had lasted, the rumors were never any less painful. The words were sharper than any claw, more crippling than the occasional pains in her chest. _

_The first word that had destroyed Dyingpaw's life was one that was said often around ThunderClan: kittypet. Apparently, it was what her father had become. She had never met him, but everyone said that she had his orange eyes. _

_The second word was one that was never said out loud. It was the one that had inspired the gazes of pity that were obviously forced._

_Suicide. _

_Firepetal had disappeared from the nursery one day, when Dyingpaw was only three moons old. Nobody found her until they fished her week-old body out of the river. _

_After examining the body, Pinewillow declared that the body was still in good condition, and it appeared that Firepetal had walked into the river by her own free will. _

_Dyingpaw shook her head slightly. She didn't want to cloud her mind. She was one step closer to becoming a warrior, and the last thing she wanted was to give into the whispers._

_Her mentor Shadowraven led the way. She was with a couple of the older apprentices, Rosepaw and Thunderpaw, and their mentors, Wetwing and Duckflight._

_The older apprentices whispered and snickered, and it was no secret who they were talking about, but Dyingpaw didn't care. She'd show them one day._

_That's when the pain started. Dyingpaw had felt small pains in her chest sometimes when she played, but never like this. She paused, trying to catch her breath. It felt as if there were flames in her chest, licking her ribs._

_All she could do was fall to the ground and cough. The rest of the group paused. Shadowraven glanced at Dyingpaw with a gaze of genuine concern. _

"_Are you okay?"_

_Dyingpaw could not answer. _

_Back at camp, Pinewillow was the first who spoke of Dyingpaw's "issue". By the end of the day, the entire clan was whispering. Oh, poor she-cat. First her father, then her other, and now she's defective. Will her troubles ever be over? _

_Dyingpaw was about ready to claw everyone's eyes out by now, but she restrained herself. It's not like she would be able to anyways, with her "issue" and all. _

The she-cat waited until her chest stopped burning. She was nearing the camp she once called home. It had been many moons since she had been thrown out like crowfood.

_This was the last straw. _

_Ever since her "issue" had been discovered, Dyingflame's abuse had gone from just whispers and rumors to full-on shunning. No cat wanted to have a nest near her in the warriors' den. Many thought that Dyingflame was not physically capable of being a warrior at all, and that she should move to the elders' den, or train as Pinewillow's apprentice. _

_Whenever cats did talk to her, it was usually to insult her in some way. Thunderstrike was the worst._

_That was why Dyingflame had gone out to her favorite spot in the forest. It was a shaded and mossy area under a small tree. Nobody knew it was there because the undergrowth grew thickly enough to dissuade others from going forward, at least those who didn't want to go there._

_It was a perfect place to forget about Thunderstrike, about her "issue", about kittypet fathers and suicidal mothers and everything else. _

_Dyingflame should have guessed that her sanctuary would be breached one day._

_First she heard the twitching and snapping of undergrowth, and then the nagging, snide voice that she knew so well._

"_Hey Dyingbreath, is this where you hide so nobody can see you cry?"_

"_My name is Dyingflame." the she-cat muttered. _

"_What was that? I couldn't hear you. Having breathing issues again?"_

"_Shut up Thunderstrike." Dyingflame could feel anger building up inside. This wasn't new. Over her whole lifetime, she had felt it build up slowly, with every whisper, every false gaze._

_And she'd had enough. _

"_What's wrong, Dyingbreath? Best not get angry. You might never breathe again."_

"_I said shut up!" Dyingflame sprang up and found the tom, and felt her claws rake through flesh and fur. She didn't hear the tom's dying screams. She just heard the pounding in her head and felt a new energy running through her veins._

_She liked this new energy. It felt good._

_The energy subsided, and Dyingflame had to pause to breathe. Thunderstrike's body lay in front of her, throat mangled and bloody._

"_Oh great StarClan, what have I done?" Dyingflame muttered. She had given into the whispers, the one thing she swore she'd never do._

_She was thinking about how to hide the body when Roseclaw happened to come by, hearing the sounds of distress nearby, and saw her brother's body and his blood on Dyingflame's paws. _

_Needless to say, exile. But Dyingflame didn't care._

The camp loomed ahead. A flash of lightning raced across the turbulent sky. Dyingflame smiled. It was good to be home, and there were a few cats she wanted to see.

Specifically, the beast.

Dyingflame shuddered just thinking about him, but it had to be done. It was time to make them all pay, but him most of all. His actions made Thunderstrike seem like a respectable tom, as unlikely as that was.

_Dyingflame gazed at the moon. It was full and silvery, illuminating the forest in its eerie light. It was a gathering night, but Dyingflame was staying behind. Even if she was chosen to go, it would be practically impossible for her to walk that much at once._

"_Hey." Dyingflame glanced up. It was Sedgeheart. The black and white tom usually kept to himself, so Dyingflame was surprised that he chose to talk to her of all cats._

"_Hi." She mewed quickly. _

"_The moon is pretty tonight." _

"_So it is."_

"_Kind of like a certain she-cat I know."_

_Dyingflame shivered slightly when she realized that the tom was referring to her._

"_I'm not pretty."_

"_Says who?" _

"_Everyone. I'm _different_. I can't breathe right, my father's a kittypet, my mother threw herself into the river, I have no friends-" _

"_That could change." Sedgeheart mewed quickly. He sat down beside her. Dyingflame's heart pounded in her chest. He twined his tail with hers, and edged closer so that they were touching._

_Sedgeheart's green eyes and Dyingflame's orange ones met, and he whispered the words that changed everything._

"_I love you, Dyingflame."  
_

_Their muzzled pressed together in the moonlight. Dyingflame felt as if she was flying to the moon, away from all her problems._

_Then she felt a heavy weight pressing on her back. What? How did they get like this? They barely knew each other. "Get off!" Dyingflame hissed, her mew a mixture of panic and anger. Her chest burned, and she coughed, trying to catch her breath, trying to throw him off, but the beast did not budge._

_A half-moon later, Dyingflame was exiled for the murder of Thunderstrike. _

_Three moons later, the ginger she-cat kitted the beast's kits, alone and helpless. There were two, both she-kits. One silver, one tortoiseshell. _

_For a brief moment, Dyingflame imagined raising her kits there, on the outskirts of clan territory, but she quickly dismissed the idea. She could barely hunt for herself. How could she provide for two more mouths? _

_Dyingflame left her daughters near ThunderClan camp, where they would certainly be found. _

"_I will always love you." She murmured to them before she left. _

The rain made it hard to see and smell, so the guards outside the camp didn't know Dyingflame was there until it was too late. The ginger slashed open the throat of one, but the other got away.

He must have warned the clan, because cats were already coming out of their dens.

Dyingflame searched their faces. The beast had not emerged yet. However, Sandstar had.

"Dyingflame, you are trespassing. This is not your home anymore." The tom's words were nearly lost in the storm. "You killed Thunderstrike. You are clearly a violent and unpredictable cat who does not belong in ThunderClan."

Dyingflame just laughed. She was about to come up with a witty retort when she heard a yowl of anguish from the camp entrance. "Duckflight's dead! Dyingflame killed Duckflight!"

Dyingflame's heart lurched when she realized that it was her former mentor, Shadowraven. Duckflight had been her mate, and the father of her four kits.

Shadowraven had been one of the few cats who accepted Dyingflame, and now she was glaring at her former apprentice with eyes of pure venom.

Everyone stood still as another brilliant bolt of lightning raced across the sky, illuminating the clan with a deafening clap of thunder.

"What's going on?" A couple of kits from the nursery had wandered out, and Dyingflame gasped when she saw that they were her own. They were large now, probably ready to become apprentices any day.

Oh, how much she wanted to run over and love them and protect them from the hardships she herself had experienced in her life. But she couldn't.

"Get back inside! It's dangerous!" a she-cat yowled, trying to make herself heard over the storm. Dyingflame recognized her as Windstreak, a she-cat who seemed to spend a lot of time with the beast after the incident.

"Yes, mother." One of the kits mewed.

_She's not your mother!_

"Dyingflame do you wish to leave peacefully?"

She thought about her father's betrayal, her mother's suicide, her various tormenters, and the beast's treachery. After all that, they wanted her to leave peacefully?

"Never."

The ginger charged forward. She had to find him. First him, then the rest.

By now, most of the cats were standing out in the rain, prepared to fight.

He came out of the warriors' den. His eyes met hers, and once again, she remembered that night, and his words.

_I love you, Dyingflame._

She raced towards him, although her chest was on fire. His eyes widened and he turned to run.

Dyingflame's claws pinned his tail down. She tried to break free but she held fast. That same energy from the day she killed Thunderstrike came, and it was just as satisfying as she remembered.

The beast's struggling intensified, and Dyingflame reached forward and pierced his neck with her claws, ignoring Windstreak's yowls from the nursery entrance.

His blood was warm and sticky.

She tore deeper, and could not make herself stop, even as she saw the twisted life leave his eyes.

Finally, the energy left, and Dyingflame collapsed. She had defiantly overexerted herself this time. She was powerless as Roseclaw ran over and pinned her down, and Windstreak came over and snapped her neck, ending the tortured life of Dyingflame.

But, as you all know, death is not the end.

Dyingflame, although initially put off by the Place Of No Stars, soon found comfort in its desolate darkness.

It was here that she watched her daughters grow up. One became a fine warrior, but it was the other that occupied Dyingflame's attention.

She watched as this daughter was exiled for having kits with a RiverClan tom, and shared in her sadness when the kits were swept away in the river.

After RiverClan turned her away as well, Dyingflame finally decided to take action. Talking to cats in the living world was risky, especially as a Dark Forest cat, but this had to be done.

As her grieving daughter slept, Dyingflame entered her dream.

"Hello." The ginger mewed.

The tortoiseshell shrank away. "W-who are you?" 

"I am your mother, Mapleshade. And I am here to help you get your revenge."


	2. The Ethereal Mist

**This is a poetry challenge for NerdClan. I kinda came up with it as I went along. Enjoy! **

The Ethereal Mist by Leopardbreath

You have heard of StarClan,

And the Place of No Stars, it seems.

But do you know of that other place,

That nobody ever dreams?

What happens to those cats that are neutral in every way?

Who are just as bad as they are good and can really ne anything?

The ethereal and misty plains

Lie between it all,

Between the land of gleaming starlight

And the horrifying caterwauls.

Nothing but mist and empty earth,

Going on forever.

Not exactly the happiest place,

Yet not the most horrifying either.

It is here that we shall meet

Some cats forgotten by time.

Who have long forgotten what it feels like

To be in the open sunshine.

First we meet Nightfeather,

Who was average in every way.

She wasn't exceptional, wasn't terrible,

And wishes she could be remembered today.

Second we have Bramblefoot,

A silent killer in the clans.

He still kept a good heart and only killed

The dark ones who messed up the plans.

Lastly is one you might have foreseen,

Whose infamous threat to Squirrelflight

Has caused much controversy.

Ashfur can go anywhere.

He is both light and dark.

But he prefers these ethereal plains

Where he can hide away

From the pains of love and living.


End file.
